Three Things to Remember when Living Here

The following three things are those which I have done incorrectly around my madame, and have been promptly corrected by said madame.

1) Always wear shoes in the house. Especially to dinner. (I had asked madame on the first day if it was a "no shoe" house or not and she said to do whatever I wanted, so I did. Some weeks later, she confided across the table at dinner to me that "we shouldn't ever walk around with naked feet. It doesn't feel right. And have shoes on at dinner.")

2) Do not blow your nose on toilet paper. Especially madame's. (I don't know if it's the toilet paper, or if it's because it's madame's, but don't! I had a cold and I was told that this was not the thing to do. That is why we buy kleenex. Never mind that it was Sunday and I was desperately ill and there was no place open where I COULD buy kleenex.)

3) Finally, stop shedding hair! Sheesh! (I mean, come on, who actually loses hair! Apparently I do, and madame pulled me aside one night to inform me that I ought to pay more attention to my hair. At first I thought she was talking like my American mom does, that I should actually make it look acceptable, but no she meant that I should stop letting stray strands fall from my head. I should pick up every one that falls off. Sadly, I don't have a buzzer that tells me when a hair comes off!)

None of these things are inappropriate when executed improperly by my roommate. Maybe it's just us dark haired, naked footed, nose blowing Sariahs!

A European Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, about 25 of us went to Geneva (that's in Switzerland!) and stayed there from Wednesday evening to Saturday evening. There is a girl in our group whose parents were recently called as mission presidents there, and the mission home has (in just the "girls" side!) over twenty beds! So yes, that was very exciting. Thanksgiving dinner was HUGE, but sadly I wasn't as appreciative as I might have been. You see...the Tuesday before this I had that tell-tale sore throat that means you're getting sick. And then Wednesday it hit. And it was BAD! As in, just before Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday the mission president gave me a blessing because I had an ear infection coming. (Don't doubt this - I've had them twice in the last year. I know what they feel like!) And so I couldn't taste dinner. And except for dinner and a five minute attempt to walk into town (which failed), I spent the ENTIRE weekend in Geneva sleeping in my room, trying to quarantine myself since nobody wanted to be near me lest they catch it. I understand their reluctance to get sick (especially considering the symptoms, and in the opinion of several seperate sources, it was the flu) but it was really lonely.

I got someone to lend me their laptop and on that I watched 12 hours of the TV show "24" (that was for you, Steven. I'd already seen the first 12.) and I sort of slept/watched movies for the whole weekend. My ear infection DID go away. But then the lovely crash when I had consumed my entire package of cold medicine occured, and it was pretty much terrible. But I'm home now and I'm feeling a bit better though walking still takes a while to recover from. I hope you all had better Thanksgivings than that, and I shall see some of you soon soon SOON this WEEK!!, and the rest of you soon enough after that!

When in Rome, Pretend You're from France

This last long weekend, I went to Rome! It was, well, very Roman, actually. Somehow I kept getting Roman things and Greek things mixed up in my head and would make extremely intelligent statements such as in the following anecdote: while wandering in the Roman ruins with a guide book to tell us what was what, Sariah (who was holding the guide book) pointed up on the hill and said, “That, I think, is the palace of Caesar. Wait, that means this is probably where Pilot washed his hands, and Christ was sent to be crucified!” (FYI, I don’t think Christ made it to Italy. I’m pretty sure that was over in Israel.) I probably fit in the dumb American category, too.

It’s almost embarrassing to say you’re from the US, because you don’t want people to have a pre-conceived image of you, and you don’t want them to treat you as they view “stupid Americans.” After seeing all these tourists everywhere, I can really appreciate that “dumb American” idea. Not that all Americans are dumb, but they are a big amount of tourists in Rome and much of the frustrations the Italians have for tourists transfers to Americans. Example: after leaving the Sistine Chapel, where the mass of people had been told “Silence please!” many times, someone in a group near me asked someone in their group, “Why do we have to be quiet in there?” Their brilliant friend responded, “I don’t know. I think it’s out of respect for the paintings. Maybe out of respect for Michelangelo since he’s dead.” Goodness, I understand being quiet in libraries and museums, but did they not notice the “Chapel” part of the sign? And since when are we quiet while discussing something that was made or invented by someone who is now dead? I think the category they need is “oblivious American,” who are oblivious sometimes out of stupidity and sometimes just because we aren’t from Europe and just don’t know things that Europeans take for granted.

Our outgoing plane (Ryanair is great and cheap) had an Italian flag drawn on its side, and next to that was written in huge letters was: “Scotland. Welcome to our life!”

Please forgive all spelling errors, but for those of you who want an inventory (probably me in a while, too) I saw the: Pantheon, Coliseum, Trevy Fountain (and yes I threw some coins in), Roman Forum (and therefore lots of Roman ruins), Vatican City, St. Peter’s, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum (and therefore lots of famous paintings including Raphael’s School of Athens), the Spanish Steps, whatever river that is in Rome, lots of ristorantes and cafes, a choir concert in some church, and many streets of Rome. If you want the history of those, well, you’ll have to look in a guidebook. I saw them, though. I ate gelato six times, I had lasagna twice, I had fettuccini, salad, pizza, calzones, Italian pastries, I drank out of the drinking fountains that are really just fountains along some streets, I pretty much died without Orangina, which I really hope they have in the states since I’m addicted to it in France, and I had a few other desserts. I met some fellow named Donatello and someone named Flavio.

I also had some interesting interactions with various salespeople. The Italians are far friendlier than the French, and more of them speak English, so we weren’t totally lost. Mostly it was funny to see all the street vendor people, who sell things from semi-legitimate souvenirs, to this expansive sort of brotherhood who sells many things but mostly illegal ones. These guys are all black – never any Italians or Caucasians – and they have their funny little way of talking and they all speak English more or less. You can pick them out by their words and body language, calling, “Lady, lady, sista, wait! Listen, you want this? Pretty lady?” And as soon as you start haggling with them over prices they always say “Okay, okay, okay” and they’ll motion to you with their hand to “give” while looking away as if this is a great secret. I’ll have to demonstrate this for you, but it is quite classic and very funny. They’ll tell you in your ear, “Okay, for you I make ten euro!” and there’s always a lot of “Okay, okay, eight euros, but lowest price!” According to my group members, I’m the “goddess at haggling,” but I really think that Grandpa Todd would take the cake with that one. I’m really not that good; I’m just willing to do it. Mostly they sell knock-off purses, sunglasses, etc., but there are some who sold the stupid, stupid stuff that people somehow buy. There was an experience we had with some stupid items and a couple vendors that is probably not quite appropriate (sorry, Quinton children!) to put in here, but if you want the story email me and I’ll see what I can do.

Overall, Rome is very neat and old but also vastly filthy. Hugely, immensely dirty, from literal trash on the roads to a very crude attitude about porn, when I had thought that Paris’ attitude about that was pretty bad. If you ever go, remember that your group is part of your experience (and not the best part of mine) and try to be understanding!

I never thought I’d be so relieved to be back in France. I guess I never realized that I was comfortable here, but compared to Rome, this is very safe because I know it. Being able to speak in French to people there was such an amazing relief, and it was fun to answer the “where you from” question with “Oh, France” even though it’s not strictly true. Somehow we got along in English/French there with pretty much everybody, and I am so, so glad to be back in Paris now, and so excited to see my family soon!!

Normandie et Bretagne

Thursday

We drove a few hours to get to Arromanches, which is the town that was “ground zero” for D-Day. This is where Port Winston is, which was the port built by the allies during the D-Day invasion. If D-Day were to work, the allies would need supplies and food after they got a hold on French land, and to get those things they needed a port. Germany controlled all the ports on the coast, so the Winston Churchill had the brilliant plan to build the port in England, and then take it over to France. Thousands of laborers built it in England in pieces, not knowing what it was for, and then it was taken across the English Channel and sunk into the ocean and assembled during D-Day. Much of it is still there and you can even see some of it at high tide. It was actually really resourceful – they used old, almost broken battleships and sunk them in the water, making the Germans think they were winning, but they used that as an underwater break for the ocean as the outside of the port. It was the first pre-built harbor.

We saw a museum at the top, on the cliffs that overlooked Arromanches and Omaha beach, and there was a really sobering video there that had footage of D-Day, and it was 360 degrees, all around you, and it was really impressive. (The D in D-Day stands for Day, like H hour or S Sariah. In France it’s called Jour J.) Then we saw a museum right along the harbor and there are flags in the town of France, England, Canada, and the US.

Then we went to the WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which we just called the American Cemetery. There are 9,387 white marble crosses (and stars of David) for the Americans who died on the beaches in Normandy, in about the 4 months around D-Day, and some of the bodies were sent back to their families in the ‘50s. These are just the Americans, and just on the Normandy beaches and just those whose families decided to let them rest there. Imagine how many people died total on all the beaches, and how many allies died in WWII, not to mention the Holocaust and even the number of the other side. It was staggering to see so many crosses; I cannot even imagine how many that number of people is.

Continuing with our war focused day, we finished up at Point Du Hoc, which is where 225 US soldiers were sent to scale these cliffs occupied by Germans during the invasion which is where the Germans were most fortified. Only 90 were alive at the end. There are bomb craters covering the tops of the cliffs, and destroyed German bunkers. It’s actually amazingly beautiful, like the rest of Normandy. It was sunset when we were there, and the craters have grass growing in them and it’s easy to choose to not remember what happened here when you’re watching the sea change color. I feel sort of guilty for thinking it was so beautiful, but it was. You can’t picnic here and it’s viewed as a gravesite. You can climb in the bunkers and down the craters (half sphere, perhaps 15 feet in radius on average, maybe 10 feet) and it is really very quiet.

Friday

The first city to be liberated after D-Day was Bayeux, which is where we saw the Bayeux tapestry, which I’d not heard of before but certainly recognized upon seeing it, but maybe because it’s so famous and is used for many examples of tapestries now. It is 70 metres long, and less than a metre tall. It is a “document” that tells the story of the Battle of Hastings: it starts with talking about King Harold (not yet king) and his adventures (accidental) in Normandy and him swearing loyalty to William (then called William the Bastard, not William the Conqueror. History added that little amendment) but then Harold becomes king and breaks his oath, so William comes after him in the battle where Normandy takes England. There was this incredibly cheesy video and almost as cheesy audio guide that was still useful as it took you through about a metre at a time (metRE is French, metER is not) and explains what’s happening.

Then we (sort of randomly, it seemed) went to Dinan, which is in Bretagne (Brittany) and is a medieval town. That means it’s very stone-oriented  and has a very distinctly medieval chateau. (How you tell the difference between an medieval chateau and one from the 14-18th centuries: medieval ones are usually on top of a hill, have ramparts, are meant for defense, are not decorated or beautiful, and are boring, gray stone. If the chateau in question lacks all or most of these details, it is likely NOT a medieval chateau.) We wandered around the cobblestone streets with the stone walls blocking us from the stone houses, and after visiting the stone chateau we walked into stone shops and eventually ate in a stone creperie. You see, Bretagne is famous for its crepes; it is the Mother of Crepes, if you will. Most famous are the galettes, which are the non-sweet crepes that you put eggs, cheese, meat, etc. in and they are fabulous in Bretagne.

Saturday

On our way home we stopped and spent 4 hours in Mon St. Michel, which is my favorite geographical anomaly of the trip. It is an island part of the time…when the tide is up (which is all day except for 90 minutes) it’s an island, and when the tide’s out, it’s not. It has one street, and is one of the top 4 pilgrimage sites in Christian history. There’s a monastery/abbey at the top, and it’s basically a big rock that is sometimes an island, too. It’s cold and windy at the top (and rainy, like everywhere in Normandy/Bretagne, especially in winter) but it was very pretty and quite impressive. Now there’s a land bridge for cars to drive to it, but it wasn’t always there and it’s known for its quick tides. Every year people die in the tides because they’re either not careful or they don’t believe what they’ve been told, which is this: if you are standing by the island when the tide starts to come in, and even if you RUN to the rest of France, you cannot outrun the tide. In the summer they have beach visiting hour and half, and that’s the safe 90 minutes when the tide is fully out. Pretty impressive.

It’s interesting to me (this has nothing to do with Mont St. Michel) how much people’s lives are still focused around WWII. Not so much in Paris, but in other cities where you can still see damage from WWII or where everything is new because the rest was destroyed. It’s still a huge part of people’s lives – people spend their whole lives now working at memorials, or if they aren’t doing that then they’re always surrounded by reminders that the war happened. I think it’s good that they haven’t erased the war, though it is a depressing thought to dwell on it all the time. I guess they get used to it, like you get used to anything. I am glad we didn’t have all this happen to us in the US. I hope it never happens.

Bocantes and Marches

If you ever make it to Paris, make sure to go visit some marches (markets) or brocantes. There are a lot down in Puces, which is in the 18e arrondisement. (Arrondisement = zone/district, and there are 20 in Paris, spiraling outward from the center of the city. Also, in France, instead of writing "1st" or "2nd", they write "e" for all "st" and "nd" and "rd" and "th." Much easier, I think.)

As I think I've mentioned before, brocantes are huge flea market things that look like a garage sale of someone's grandma. Marches ("marsh-ay") can be those selling food, so you have fruit, fish, meat, veggies, etc. all around, or others that sell clothes, shoes, jewelry, trinkets, etc. In Puces today there were all of the above, but it's neat because their brocantes are more inside, and are year-round although only open on weekends. The products are EXTENSIVE! It's really fun to walk up and down and look at things, especially with other people so you can exclaim over the extreme ugliness or the exciting choices. You'll also have to brush up on your haggling - it helps to have two of you, as we learned today when you can play off each other and provide support against the crazy vender who won't budge. We saved a lot today, and probably could have saved more but oh, well, it was fun! I especially recommend these brocantes to you, grandparents!

Just Some French Oddities

France is sometimes marked as a pessimistic country. Given these French proverbs, you can see why:
"Wait until it is night before you say it has been a fine day." (goodness!)
"The crow is no whiter for being washed." (pigeons, too)
"Everything passes, everything breaks, everything wearies." (true, but hardly motivational)
"Honey is sweet but bees sting." (normal people would put that the other way around)
"It's all very well in our practice, but it will never work in theory." (doesn't that pretty much say it all?)

Now let's inspect some prices in France. The gist: expensive! Drinks are expensive, especially at restaurants. I once ordered an orangina (a regular 50 cl bottle you'd get in the US) and it ended up being something like 6.80 euros! At Cyrano de Bergerac the other night, cans of pop, juice, and water (oh yeah and water is odd and carbonated here if it's a fancy dinner) were 4 euros each. Books are reasonably priced except for ones in other languages, where your basic paperback is about 11 euros, about $15. Since so many stores here focus on one item to offer (cheese stores, bakeries, etc.), the ones that sell it all (like Monoprix which is like a mini Target) cost a LOT, I guess for the luxury of only making one stop for shopping. Bread is really cheap here, though. McDonalds is probably the cheapest place it is possible to go for lunch unless you buy one baguette.

As for church differences, it is interesting to note that they only have about 2/3 of the hymns. Their titles are ALWAYS the first line of the song, never a seperate title. (Example, in English, "How Great Thou Art" starts with the words "O Lord, My God." In France, it is called "Savieur Mon Dieu," which is the first line.) Also of the hymns they have, about half of them are in either a different key or different time signature or both. I have no idea why this is. But in scouring to find something I can play when I don't know what hymns they are because they're in FRENCH, I soon realized I can't browse the music to find it. So pretty much, every time I have to play at church, I am sight reading. In both music AND spoken language, if I decide to try to sing along. Papi said you might find that interesting, Karma.

Salon du Chocolat

Yesterday I went to the Salon du Chocolat, which is to say, a HUGE CHOCOLATE CONVENTION! Yes, it is for real! There were literally hundreds of stands and stores represented from all over Paris, and there was all manner of free chocolate, and you paid to get in, but then you could browse all the chocolateness!

There were clothes made out of or or sprayed/smeared with chocolate, there were massages given with chocolate, hair waxing stuff made from some sort of chocolate, hot chocolate, chocolate fountains, mousse au chocolat, ice cream, a room decorated with chocolate pastries (HUGE ONES! Probably not real), lots of pastries, macarons (which are really, really good. They're not nuts - that's what I thought when I heard. MacaROANs, not macarOOOns.)

And I bought some stuff. For some of you. Or not. Maybe I'll keep it. I admit, though, that I came out feeling a little bit doozy. Perhaps I ate some chocolates with alcohol? They weren't labelled - just proffered. I took. I don't think I was really drunk, though. :) And I felt a tad sick. I think I'll stay from chocolate for a little bit after all that!

Salon du Chocolat

Yesterday I went to the Salon du Chocolat, which is to say, a HUGE CHOCOLATE CONVENTION! Yes, it is for real! There were literally hundreds of stands and stores represented from all over Paris, and there was all manner of free chocolate, and you paid to get in, but then you could browse all the chocolateness!

There were clothes made out of or or sprayed/smeared with chocolate, there were massages given with chocolate, hair waxing stuff made from some sort of chocolate, hot chocolate, chocolate fountains, mousse au chocolat, ice cream, a room decorated with chocolate pastries (HUGE ONES! Probably not real), lots of pastries, macarons (which are really, really good. They're not nuts - that's what I thought when I heard. MacaROANs, not macarOOOns.)

And I bought some stuff. For some of you. Or not. Maybe I'll keep it. I admit, though, that I came out feeling a little bit doozy. Perhaps I ate some chocolates with alcohol? They weren't labelled - just proffered. I took. I don't think I was really drunk, though. :) And I felt a tad sick. I think I'll stay from chocolate for a little bit after all that!

Little Red Riot-Hood

So yesterday was two things: 1) the two Paris wards' Halloween party (they don't celebrate Halloween here but there are enough Americans to at least merit a party for the kids), and 2) the one year anniversary of the Paris riots when the two children were killed. Both these things were significant in my life yesterday.

I decided that I could dress up as Little Red Riding Hood for the party, but with my meager resources and borrowed clothing, I ended up in a red shirt, red tights that were sort of fishnets, a black skirt, two braided pigtails, black heels (my only black shoes), a red hat and a red/pink scarf. Now, walking down the street to meet my friend to go into the city for said party, I must have looked a sight in my red and black and fishnets, which didn't even occur to me. A fellow driving by honked and slowed his car enough to grin and wink at me. I thought in despair, "Oh no! Little Red Riding Hood gone prostitute!"

To add to this, upon arriving at the party, someone asked me if I was supposed to be a hooker. I glared at them, and then decided to succumb to my fate. Someone let me use bright red lipstick and dark eyeliner, and then we found some masking tape and put a large letter "A" on my shirt. For those of you who don't know, I was now Hester Prynne of the Scarlet Letter, but I looked far more adulterous than she ever did. And that was me for Halloween. Bear in mind as I continue this story that this is what I wore on the way home, minus the tape which I pulled off.

Now, in various suburbs of Paris including one close to my little suburb, people have been burning various busses in response to this one year anniversary. This was not a safe night to be out alone and there were police EVERYWHERE. So though it wasn't a scary day, it was a tense day that made you more alert to be scared.

We stopped for a crepe at a stand that happened to be on the edge of the street that is filled with sex shops and the several blocks down is the prostitute area of Paris. This was right next to our metro stop, however, so it wasn't as though we were deliberatly asking to be solicited. My friend Esther had been the person in the haunted house who "killed" someone with garden sheares, so she had thick eyeliner, black lipstick, and all black clothes on. I noticed a greasy, oily, and scruffy looking man oogling her, and realized that the sorts of people who are on this street are the ones who are looking for certain things from girls, and indeed he sidled up to talk to her. He kept trying to talk to her but the creperie man (bless his soul!) kept interrupting and glaring at this man. Esther was oblivious that she looked like an easy girl if not a real prostitute due to her get-up.

Finally as we were leaving, the man asked if he could have another minute of Esther's time. Esther, just thinking "Oh, I can speak French!" said yes but the rest of us all said "NO!" and dragged her away from this man, who was rather sketchy. I think we all looked like rather easy girls, being dressed as we were.

On the metro home, the train did not stop in Nanterre (which is where some busses were burned and where those children who died last year lived) and there were so many police in all the stations - and scent dogs, too, even on the train. That was a bit startling. Getting off the train, my carte orange, which is my metro pass that costs a lot of money got stuck in the machine and we couldn't get it out and it's pretty much my LIFE, so thankfully some fellows stoped to help us. One of them looked at Esther, still blackly clad, during this and asked in English, "Do you want to go out?" and she said, "YES!" thinking he was referring to out of the station. But no, upon the lovely retrieval of my life, using bobby pins and eventually my earrings, the three men asked us if we wanted "to go, how you say?, drinking? or eat some crepes?" but we showed them the remainder of our crepes we'd just gotten. We felt a little beholden to them, them having saved my carte orange, but at least Esther said "no" this time.

A Night at the Theatre!

For my theatre/cinema class, we're reading some plays and then going to see them. A month or so ago we saw "Le Cid," by Corneille. Last night we went to go see "Cyrano de Bergerac." For those of you who are in the dark, this is a very famous play by Rostand and it's about a man, Cyrano, who has an exceedingly large nose. He is a poet/cadet, and he is in love with Roxanne, but Roxanne is in love with another cadet named Christian. Christian can't write very well, though, so Cyrano writes love letters to Roxanne which Christian signs and delivers, and so Roxanne falls more in love with Christian but it's really Cyrano whose words she loves! Aah! Anyway, so last night we saw it at the Comedie Francaise, which is the acting company instituted by Louis XIV, and they are always the epitome of great theatre.

The play was a very odd rendition, though, and they used little red polka dots thrown in the air for blood when someone got hurt, and odd little films of off-stage action, and they never covered up their sets off stage, so it was very odd. It never really settled on a time period, either. It was good, but in an odd sort of way.

However, some observations about theatres here, or at least the ones I've been in: thy are vey elaborate. There is a floor-level with perhaps 100 seats and then about five balcony levels, all spanning 3 sides of the room except for the stage. There are box seats which remind me of operas, and the balconies are guilded and sculptured and very elaborate. It doesn't really make a difference to the play itself, but it is indeed a very different atmosphere. It makes it somehow more cultured, and it gives you the feeling of being rich and privliged, going to a play in surroundings like this, but at the same time it makes you pay attention to how cultured the French are, since they're always going to plays and while they don't take the sculptures/guilding for granted, they EXPECT it. It makes me want to be more cultured myself.

Paris at Night

Paris at night is much more the city you picture when you hear "Paris." I had been surprised at how almost un-romantic it was here, but when you go out at night, you really feel like you are in Paris. What clinched it for me was walking across a bridge over the Seine into the Ile de la Cite (the island that has Notre Dame on it) and looking out at the ships and the lights reflected on the water. It is beautiful! And all the sights by night look very different and much more imposing. But you're expecting them to be imposing, and at least at nighttime they fulfill your expectations! There really is something magical about walking around the city at night.

It doesn't feel very dangerous, either - no more than your other average big city. The only difference is the slight fear that, in essence, I don't really speak the language. It's sad - I really think I'm getting worse.

Anyway, the story is that last Friday I finally went up the Eiffel Tower. It was pretty expensive and I was indignant that they didn't have a student discount; I guess I'm too used to museums which let art students in for free or at least for a very very cheap rate. You take a diagonal elevator up to the second floor, which is where the legs of the tower end and it goes straight up. You then stand in a very long line for a very long time (but this is key: it allows for conversation with your fellow friends) and then you go up this amazingly long elevator. Tip: when coming down, don't look down the crack between the platform and the elevator or else you might very well swoon. It was very very cold at the top, but only on the side that the wind was blowing at, but we bore it because it was less crowded. It's fun to identify things from up there. And to have your friends ask you (I don't know why I am the one they always ask things, it's not like I know any more than someone else) "Sariah, what's that over there," only to have me look at say "I have no idea...?" and then they look at you accusingly for letting them down. I know everyone expects me to KNOW everything but it isn't true! It was very fun and very impressive.

Oh and since yesterday I added a few more pictures. You're up to date!

Pictures!

Lots and lots of new pictures uploaded, with explanations! Click on the link on the right side of the page to see them.

Tacos

On Tuesday my roommate and I made dinner for Madame. We decided that we should make something American for her, and somehow we both thought of tacos, which aren't really "American," but everybody in the US has had a taco, right? So we began.

First, you have to realize that the oddest things prove very difficult here: for example, locating and affording the ingredients. I spent about 9 euros (maybe 12ish US dollars) on the meat, which was only half a pound of ground beef. The store also only carried one size to choose from. Next, sour cream? No. Didn't happen. We couldn't even begin to imagine what that might be called in French, since it's just a description in English anyway. Cheddar cheese? You'd think in a country famous for its cheeses, it'd have them all but...not so! Only French cheeses, and zero cheddar. We refused to mix more cultures into this taco, so we went without cheese as well. My mom had mailed me a few weeks ago taco seasoning and tortillas, so we were set there since there wasn't any of either at the stores we visited.

We had a grand old time, us roomies plus a friend of mine who doesn't have a roommate who Madame said we coudl invite, in the kitchen preparing the food, listening to music on our computers, and generally bustling about and singing along. It's a good thing Madame didn't come home just then. My roommate wanted to put all the toppings in pretty bowls, but I wanted to be ULTRA un-French and keep them in pans, etc., but she won out on the end - I think Madame would have been shocked to actually see a pan of rice at the table.

We had to show Madame how to put it together (Oh and it was quite funny to watch her try to eat the chips and salsa) and she had a most difficult time eating it with her hands. Poor lady - she ended up scooping the lost toppings onto her fork surruptitiously with her chips after a taco. She was surprised when we kept eating, and we explained that pretty much this was the only course. We DID make dessert but really none of us have dessert every day. So she willingly dug in to yet another, exclaiming to me at one point, "Sariah, how do you keep it all in the, how you say, tortilla!?" and we showed her again how to fold it. She seemed to have fun, though, watching our obvious delight at something we all knew and loved from years of experience, and she kept commenting, "C'est delicious! Tres bon!" I hope she actually DID like it! And she was somewhat shocked at the spicy Taco Bell sauce my mom sent me. We tried to warn her...! Poor lady...but that was something I thought I'd never see, the image of Madame using her hands to try to eat a messy taco.

Les Châteaux de la Loire (Castles of the Loire)

We went on a three day excursion to go see the châteaus in the Loire Valley. This includes all the famous ones people know, such as Chenonceau or Chambord, and also far less well known ones. (When I type a name, such as Blois or Lingeais, I mean that chateau, not a city. Usually they were cities too, but we didn’t go visiting cites; we went a-castling.)

Thursday

Today we went to Blois, which was pretty, but it was a good thing it was first; otherwise nobody would have cared since we’ve seen so many amazing chateaus this week. We also went to the city Amboise and its Chateau de Clos Lucé, which is where Leonardo da Vinci lived for three years (and also where he died). It didn’t look like a chateau, and in fact until looking it up later I just thought it was a house with extensive grounds. The house was neat and cool, as they had many models of his inventions all around and interesting facts, such as “this is the room in which he painted his painting of John the Baptist.” The grounds, however, were amazing!

At first, I was just struck by how beautiful they are – a miniature forest with some fields and some little swamps…no wonder he made inspired paintings! Soon, however, you appreciate all the work the people who made this a sort of memorial put into it – scattered throughout all his grounds, there are life-size models of his inventions (and most of them are functioning!) and little descriptions of them. There were perhaps 12 of these models that I saw (and I didn’t get everywhere) and there are also lots of sort of silk-screens of his paintings/sketches that are huge hanging from trees all over the grounds, and they are really impressive. These grounds were my very favorite thing about this whole weekend – they were amazing!

Food, the Good: We had an amazing dinner tonight, too. It had an amazing sort of stew dish which I forgot the name of – I’ll ask, though, since I plan to make it pretty much every day when I get back to the US. It had white beans and duck meat and an amazing gravy/sauce and was AMAZING! We also had the best dessert I’ve had here, which was chocolat fondant, which was also marvelous.

Friday the 13th

In France, Friday the 13th is actually a really lucky day. Lots of people buy lottery tickets and look for signs on that day. Our day started out nicely, then, when we saw a little gray kitten outside Villandry. It came right up to me and climbed on my lap as I knelt to pet it. The daughter of our directors named him Leonardo da Vinci, and he let me pick him up and let me/the daughter (but she kept almost dropping him, so I was the delegated holder while she petted) carry him for almost ten full minutes as we wandered the gardens. (We didn’t even go inside the chateau, since this one’s only famous for the gardens.) As it turns out, it wasn’t so lucky, since my good friend is allergic to cats and had to move from her seat next to mine for the rest of the day after she sniffed and looked at me accusingly – “You were WEARING that sweater when you HELD it!”

Then we went to Lingeais, which is the “most medieval” chateau in this valley. This was very cool – we got to walk along the ramparts, which are that little bit along the tops of towers/castles that looks like it sticks out a little bit and has little windows in it. I didn’t know that this was actually a place for guards/etc. to walk around in, and it was really cool. An important thing to remember about medieval castles is that they weren’t built for beauty; they were built for defense, which is why they’re usually nondescript and fortress-like. I think we might have made our director’s wife (who is Romanian) roll her eyes as we walked the ramparts singing, “…and the raaaaaamparts we walked were so gallantly streaming!” and making up other phrases of our national anthem that were appropriate to the castle. I don’t think the ramparts they watched were of this kind, though.

We took a quick peek at the exterior of Chateau d’Ussé, which was the model for the castle in Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.” After that, we went to Azay-le-Rideau which was another of my favorites. We (the director’s daughter, I, and another girl who somehow ended up exploring all the castles together) called it the Beauty and the Beast castle, since it was surrounded by a little forest and was quite lovely. It was very fun and surrounded on 3 sides by a lake/river thing, and it was really cool. There was another cat on the pathway to/from the chateau who let us pet it and it was black (Friday the 13th! Black cats! Lucky us!!) and it was sleepy (so much so that it hadn’t moved when we came back, and leaves had fallen on it) and we named it Catherine de Medici. I miss my kitties at home now! The director was actually half talked into taking the first one (we were informed by a worker that it was a stray but a friendly one) home, since their daughter’s birthday is in a week anyway, but then there’s the whole bus/going to the bathroom cat problem.

Saturday

This morning we went to go see Chenonceau, which is the picturesque chateau that spans across a river. It was quite large and one of the “top two” chateaus of the valley. It had really nice long halls across the river with windows on both sides from which you could see the river and boats going under it. It also had very fun kitchens, and had these squashes/gourds that were tall and skinny and green, so at first they looked like candles: more specifically, like when Shrek pulled out his earwax and used it as a candle. On the grounds, our little chateau-exploring group (the two of us plus the cute 8 year old girl, Anna-Marie) took the opportunity to teach Anna-Marie (us being LDS girl’s camp veterans, and A-M being neither) the songs “The Princess Pat,” and many others. We gave her candy, too – her poor parents are going to hate us. She’ll probably go around singing “A rigabamboo! Now what is that? It’s something made by the Princess Pat…” for weeks.

Then we went on to Chambord (the other “top two”) which was IMMENSE. The first thing you notice, however, is the roof. It looks like a city up there. It is truly amazing – something like 200 chimneys, all decorated beautifully in an amazingly organized pattern. I spent most of my time there on the roof (there’s a roof balcony thing) and it is completely beautiful – my other favorit-est thing of the trip. It reminded me of Bert’s singing in Mary Poppins, only minus the smoke and London: “Up where the smoke is all billowed and curled, ‘tween pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world. Where there’s hardly no day, nor hardly no night, worlds off in shadows, off way and wide. On the rooftops of London…ooh, what a sight!” We (my little castle club!) sang this together some several times here, it is true.

Summary: We saw eight chateaus (ten if you count the two we walked past to get to our destinations, and many more if you count the drive), and spoke French lots, and petted kitties and ate amazing food and didn’t shower and lost my deodorant, and filled up my entire camera memory card, and decided what specific digital camera I am going to buy since I’ve discovered that mine is dumb, oh oh oh! and used my friend’s digital micro-focus to take close up pictures of our eyes, and slept on the bus but not at the hotel, and ate bread for breakfast and it was, all of it, GREAT!

What it's like

During one of my "France is stupid, everything is dumb here" episodes earlier on, someone told me something our director told their class. He said that if we were to go to India or Africa, we would expect the culture to be completely different; however, coming here, we expect it to much like America so we get frustrated when it's not. Remembering that helps me not to be too frustrated that the light switches are upside down, or upset that the shower and toilet and sink are in different rooms.

That said, let's go through a typical day for me, which isn't frustrating, but hey, why not?

I wake up, whereupon I eat breakfast, which in France is bread and hot cocoa. That's all. Bread in French is "pain," pronounced "pan," like a stove pan, and I hated only having that at first but I'm used to it now. I get ready to go, and then I either walk down 4 flights of stairs or take the smallest elevator ever (not kidding - it's maximum capacity it says is 3 people, but it's very uncomfortable with 2). Then I walk the 15 minute walk to the RER (the metro line that goes from the suburbs into Paris) stop, called the "gare," and then take the 30 minute RER ride into town. (By the way, the French go on strike all the time and on the RER what that means is it goes very slow, so last week the RER ride was over an hour long.) I go to class in the institute, which is also the church building, and which is next door to a gay bar and in the center of the homosexual area of the city. It's pretty funny - the gay bar is called "curieux," which means "curious" and is pretty funny to see that next door to the missionaries.

Depending on what day it is, I might go in to town early and walk around/eat lunch/go see sites/use the internet, or I might go around after class. Either way, I rarely just go in for only school.

I then take the RER home, and walk home, but the walk home takes 25 minutes since they close a gate at 7 pm and I have to walk around the entire complex (sometimes I just jump the wall next to the gate, though). On M, T, and W I have dinner with Madame, (and two of the last 3 meals have been fish. Sigh. Once it was raw salmon.)
or I'll eat it on the walk home from the RER after I had bought it in the city.

I then stay up and do homework/play around with pictures on my laptop, watch the exciting movies my mom mailed me (thanks Mom!) or play computer games or read books, since my mom mailed me one, I bought one, and I borrowed one from my friend. I am going through withdrawel not having books here, by the way. And then I go to sleep. I only have classes on M, T, W, so on the long weekends I'll spend a lot of time in Paris or explore other cities (ex, yesterday I went to see where Louis XIV was born in the next village up, and it turns out I can see that chateau in the distance from my apartment window) and it's great fun!

What the French Think

Last night I went to go chat with my French mom about how it’s nice to see things differently now that I’ve been here. I gave a few examples of little small things that are cool and different, my “petite madeleines,” and how only having been here a month has changed my paradigm. Well, that’s what I had intended to say but I don’t know the word for paradigm in French, but as I tried to get across what I was thinking about, her response struck me as being actually very profound, especially coming to someone like me from someone like her.

She said, (and this is per my memory and translation and paraphrasing), “It’s important to know when the world is different. People don’t like each other so often because they don’t understand what the other is thinking. And when people have had problems and are later in their life like me, you realize what is important and it’s the same things that are important everywhere. We say, ‘Well so-and-so is what the Americans think,’ and they say that about us, but what’s important is that we’re both right! Things that are so different are really the same, and it’s important to understand people.”

Conference, Sketchy Restaurants, and Drunk Kisses

For those who are interested in how General Conference works in different time zones, here’s a quick sketch of how it works for us: on Saturday, we went to the stake centre in Versailles, and we watched the RS broadcast from the week before at 4 pm our time, then at 6 watched the live streaming of Saturday AM session. On Sunday, the men go in to watch the recorded priesthood session at 11 am, then at 2 pm everyone watches the recorded Saturday PM. Then you get 2 hours to eat (or in my case, go to stake choir practice in French. Hah, that was interesting) and then we watched Sunday AM live at 6. Next Sunday becomes Fast Sunday, and for the first two hours of church we’ll watch the recorded Sunday PM and then have a brief fast and testimony meeting.

On Saturday after conference we went into Paris and ate dinner at a sketchy Greek restaurant (we didn’t realize how sketchy it was until after we’d ordered) that was quite funny. Behind me was the backside of a naked Greek statue, and I noticed that not many people looked at me during the meal – it must have been too distracting. The food was okay, nothing special, but it was cheep. And our ice cream desert came in little paper packets. Esther (one of my friends) got escargot (in a Greek restaurant!?) and we all tried it, including me, Mom! You’d be proud! It tasted like dirt, but maybe that was the dirt that was in it. Hmm.

Trying to find the metro, we ran into a few drunk French youth. They told us they were drunk and we saw them with some beer so I’m guessing it was true. (The French are naturally reserved, so in my experience, when they get drunk they get very friendly and flirty, not violent.) It was very funny, and one fellow (probably 16-17?) asked me to go to a “discothèque” with him (dance hall) but I had to decline.  He wouldn’t let me take his picture since he claimed he was a huge model and had to protect his image (but he wasn’t a model. He was attractive, though, for a 16 year old!) but he offered to kiss me instead. I was a little worried he’d just plop one on me, so he clarified: kiss my cheeks in the French fashion. So yes, I got kissed in France by a strange Frenchman.

The Belle Hotel

On Tuesday, Sariah (that's me) was sitting outside the Pompidieu, in the courtyard, using her computer. It's one of the few places she can get free internet and yes, Mom, she settled down near other students using their computers so I wasn't completely alone. This turned out to be a good thing.

I was looking up hotels in Rome to see how costly they are should I go there, when a man walked by. This man was perhaps 50, he was smelly, bearded, scruffy, pock-marked, short, and homeless looking. His French was very difficult to understand and so I ignored him, thinking he was asking for money. Not so. He sat down beside me, and was still talking in French but it was very lispy and airy and thick, so I only got maybe a third of what he was saying. He did say I was tres belle (very pretty), which is nice I suppose, but after he kept muttering, I told him I spoke French when he asked, so he wouldn't think he could go around calling me things (that's another story) that he hoped I'd agree to in English.

I started closing the windows I had open on my computer so I could leave since he was creeping me out, and he asked what I was doing. I briefly said, "Studying for class," to which he asked, "is it a tennis class?" Somewhat puzzled by where he was getting this idea, I said no, and he saw my window up about hotels in Rome and said in French, "Maybe we can go there after your class."

I said, very confused, "Rome?" He said, "No, a hotel!" I gave him a look and then quickly left. It was difficult for me to just leave because there's a chance he was homeless and I had misheard him and I hate being rude but I was glad there were lots of people and I said lots of prayers that I'd get away okay and he wouldn't follow me. He didn't, and I did get away just fine. Thank goodness! The moral: maybe it's not always good to be belle in France!

A few very French Things

-Kamikazee pigeons. All around you.
-People coming on the metro and playing the accordion for money
-drinks in restaurants costing about 4 euros for a pint of liquid
-you don't have to give tips; it's included in the price, which is why food costs so much (partly)
-very few public restrooms. MacDo (mcdonalds) is the most reliable place to find them
-The MacDo on Champs Elysses is the only one in the world to have golden arches that are white. It's a requirement - all buildings on that street must be white
-every hour, on the hour, for ten minutes, the Tour Eiffel sparkles.
-internet is ridiculously hard for students to find
-French cars are tiny
-French driving involves only honking to let someone know you're coming, never in irritation since everybody's irritating. Americans would flip out driving here, people are so rude on the road.
-food-specific stores: bread store, cheese store, frozen food store, etc.
-American titles, brands, phrases that are often odd (ex., US swear words are only as strong here as "drat!" is in the US so it's easy to get offended by what people are calling you, ex., US word "sexy" is spelled "sex'y" here, ex., Puma is huge here, as are US movies)
-You use "American" for the adjective and "United States" for the noun. Don't say you're from America; nobody does that.
-Tourists are really, REALLY obvious.
-pitch your voice lower and slur your words a little bit to pretend you have an accent

And finally, this morning's experience: la Brocante. This is sort of like an expensive flea market - very old stuff, lots of vendors, outside, etc. It actually reminded me of a very expensive, very HUGE garage sale. Mom would have loved it. Super expensive. Super huge. I managed to get a ring for 5 euros when it really cost 12, since the lady said 5 before she checked, but most places when I asked if they had anything under 15 euros looked at me in horror and commented that I must be a student. Too true!

Food, the bad.

On the bus ride home, our director called randomly on people and had them come up and say what they liked/didn't like about the trip (to the bus on the microphone, no less). Most people (out of maybe 6 total) gave sort of testimonies, which was nice, but also sort of out of place on the noisy, sleepy, smelly bus ride. I got called up last and decided I'd be honest. I believe my comment was something like this: "I hated the food. That was the worst part. I also loved the food. That was my favorite part. It was either great or terrible" and I went on to explain that my biggest fear since I was a kid for serving a mission was the food. This was after the raw salmon/raw roast beef experiences.

Since then, I've gotten to eat more exciting and terrible stuff. We eat dinner with our French Maman (mommy) 3 times a week, and there are always more than 3 courses, usually about six, and usually it is all new. One night we had a "cheese pie," which is basically quiche. We always have some kind of meat, and Fr. Maman likes pork which is good since I do, too. Once for an especially ornate first course (she spends 3 hours cooking for us. It's amazing.) there was this cucumber/cream sauce thing, which was tasty, except for the slices of crab on top. I had to eat it all. My American mom suggested taking small servings and that way avoiding too much nasty food, but not so! She dishes it all out and we get a new plate/bowl for each meal, so no serving ourselves. I want you all to know that I ate ALL my crab and I was so proud that I didn't gag visibly. It was pretty much the hardest thing here...until last night, when we had fish.

There were only two fishes, (well, breaded fish fillets, I guess) and so I hoped she remembered that I hate fish and didn't get one for me, but NO, Fr. Maman wasn't having any fish! Sigh. I should have taken a picture - it was huge. I had to eat it - what else could I do? Oh and Ben would appreciate that on the side, as an added blessing was steamed/cooked spinach which in comparison to the fish was a veritable doughnut. I managed to eat 3/4 of the fish before I simply couldn't anymore, but that was enough to render itself acceptable, and everything was good.

I am quite proud of me but I'd rather not have any reason to be proud...!

Girly Dreams, Versailles, and l'Eglise!

I fulfilled every girl's dreams on Friday...I went shopping. In Paris. Pretty much all day. I got a good outfit out of it, too. What girls do NOT dream about I also got...that's right, huge blisters and amazingly painful feet. I cleverly wore character shoes, since I figured for heels they've gotta be relatively comfy. I believe the response to that statement would be a picture of me kneeling in the sock section at a Monoprix (like a mini Target) in Paris crawling around, keeping my feet off the ground.

Versailles was actually, to me, dissapointing. Much of it was under construction, or rather, "restoration," which means they're cleaning it, so that wasn't cool but mostly it was dark and musty and crowded. I had thought the gardens would be amazing but they were extensive and sort of...only extensive. I'm sorry if I'm hurting anyone's opinions out there! We DID spend a while playing with some slugs and had a fun time haggling with the souvenir sellers. I also saw the Tour Eiffel! It was exciting and it SPARKLES every hour which was very exciting.

Church (eglise) today was interesting. It's exhausting to be actively translating the whole time. Oh yes and I also was the piano player for all three hours today. With hymns with different names and a lot of the music is a little bit different here. It was fun, though. We found a family from Boston who speak English and are just here for two years (one down!) and they sort of knew Hannah/Tyler when they were here.

Week of Adventures!

What I’ve been doing!

Wed/Thurs
Mostly we just had orientation to our classes and got all our cards for free entrance to museums. I went on two of the 18 required “Paris Walks” and got to see the Place de Concorde, Tour Eiffel, Louvre, and the Palais Royale. My lunch was a roast beef sandwich. Upon opening the bread to push a loose piece of lettuce back in and before beginning to eat, I discovered that the roast beef was raw. There was blood soaked in to the bread. I ate it ALL, Mom.

Collonges-la-Rouge and Sarlat - Friday
We started our trip south today, and stopped in a little village called Collonges-la-Rouge, which is neat because it is made entirely out of red sandstone. It is very picturesque. We drove on down to Sarlat, which ended up being my favorite village. For dinner, the first course the hotel served was salad with salmon on top – raw salmon. I did eat one bite of the salmon, you’d be proud, and then just at the salad that wasn’t contaminated. Luckily he next courses were tasty and we finished off with a nice Crème Brulée

Sarlat, Beynac, and Domme - Saturday
This was the best day of the trip by far! There was a market in Sarlat (these have been happening every Saturday since the middle Ages) and it was great fun to wander the stalls around the city and look at everything from huge cheese rinds to knife shows to purses and rings. They used to have livestock too, but a few years ago laws banned that in the middle of town for sanitation reasons. I got lots of little things there, and I am happy with them ALL! (I got something for Becky…)
After the marché, we went to a canoe rental place and went, as it is in French, canöing down the Dordogne for about three hours, seeing châteaus every half hour or so. We pulled off the river at the Château de Beynac, which is a medieval castle built for defensive purposes and one of the only châteaus in that region to remain loyal to France during the Hundred Years War. The end of the movie “Ever After” was filmed here, and part of that movie was also filmed in Sarlat. We walked up the huge, ridiculously steep hill of the city and arrived at Beynac pouring sweat. (Did I mention that the humidity is killing me?) We had a funny tour guide with a very thick southern French accent and who made fun of me for mispronouncing Dordogne (the river and also the region) and randomly would exclaim it to me as we walked through the chateau. Finally I got it right, and not only is it my new favorite French word, but also nobody else in my group can pronounce it right except for me. It took me an hour to say it right.
We spent the night just outside of Domme in the Hotel de Quatre Vents, which means “four winds” but on their sign written in a calligraphy-type font, the V of Vents looked like a D, which would make it the Hotel of the Four Teeth. Which was very funny. There was a nasty silverfish centipede thing in our room which caused lots of fuss with us, and we got yelled at all night (once after centipede, which we deserved, and once when we were ASLEEP, waking us UP) by a lady who was shrieking in French, “Silence, s’il vous plait! En FIN!”


Church, St. Cirq, Pech-Merle, and Figeac - Sunday
We went to church in Brieve and doubled the size of the branch. The hymns were very cool to sing in French, but we only stayed for Sacrament Meeting. We made a short stop in St. Cirq-Lapopie, which was another city on a hill (quite literally) and headed to Grotte du Pech-Merle. Pech-Merle is a cave filled with cro-magnon paintings. France is a big site for such things, and we got to see a painting of spotted horses which was very cool and is one of the most famous cave paintings and is put in most textbooks as an example of what they’re like. The caves were cool, and we got to see cave pearls and we saw a cave pearl top and it’s one of only 3 known ones in the world.
We went then to Figeac, where we went out to put our feet in the pool before dinner and two people got pulled/thrown in the pool by our bus driver (who is larger, very French, smokes at least 2 packs of cigarettes a day, and was wearing a speedo) and I elected to voluntarily go in (don’t worry, I didn’t ruin my skirt, I wore boxers) and keep them company. Dripping hair and clean clothed, we went to dinner which was an amazingly tasty l’agneau dish (lamb) with very very tasty potatoes and may very well be my new favorite food, if I could remember what it was called. We also had mousse au chocolat! We went on a walk in the city and 3 of us decided to go back to the hotel before the rest but we got lost, although we eventually found it. There were a lots of prayers said by each of us then, since we didn’t know what our hotel was called or what street it was on and there were lots of French men who were probably harmless and lots of dark streets. It turned out to be close, so we were okay. Unfortunately, my roommate with the room key was still out walking, so I sat, locked out, in the neighboring room in my sweaty shirt wanting a shower.

Conques and Albi - Monday
We went to Conques, which is where St. Foy’s remains are kept on Monday. St. Foy was a 12 year old girl who was killed for not renouncing her Christianity. We saw her reliquary which was given to Conques by Charlemagne, along with various other objects of great significance. One of those was a box which allegedly held rocks from Christ’s tomb and pieces of His cross. I don’t know how true that is, but if I were a Catholic pilgrim (like the many, many who come there and start the Camino de Santiago de Compostela there) I would start the Camino there, too. The symbol of Conques is a shell, the same as the symbol of the Camino. We met several pilgrims just starting out, and all were very surprised to hear that my sister had done the Camino this summer, and told me to tell you, Becky, (in case you plan to do this again and didn’t catch this importance by yourself) that if you were to do it every summer as they, seasoned Camino veterans do, to bring good shoes. Don’t go forgetting that, as I know it never occurred to you! There was also a way cool sculpture thing on the face of the cathedral that was of the Final Judgment that was very detailed and had funny little demons.
We went on to Albi and saw the museum of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who was born in Albi, and so when he died his art was donated by his mother to the city. This fellow was a midget and had lots of genetic disorders since his parents were first cousins. His mother took him to Montmartre (near Sacre Coeur) and he spent his life there from adolescence until death, spending a lot of time in Moulin Rouge (in the movie Moulin Rouge, he’s the midget) and he is famous for his style and also for his posters. If you think of a poster of Moulin Rouge, the famous ones are his. I’ll try to get a picture of one to post for you. Also at Albi we had nasty gross pizza with Roquefort cheese and yummy, tasty profiteroles.

Cordes-sur-Ciel, Rocamadour, and Limoges - Tuesday
To make a long morning short, my roommate and I spent 50 minutes lugging our luggage around Albi trying to find our bus, which turned out to actually only be five minutes away had we gone the other direction. That was not fun, and that day my daily drenching of sweat (I think as a group we’ve pretty much given in to the fact that everyone is going to be SOAKED and DRENCHED all the time. We wonder if we should just toss the deodorant and be like the French?) came early that day.
We went to Cordes-sur-Ciel and walked up yet another tall city hill (drenching number two) and I was dismayed to see that we walked all that way to no castle, no cathedrale, but just for the view. I was somewhat disgusted with this motive, since this particular trek was optional, but there was indeed a lovely café that gave me a nice steak, an okay salad, and very fluffy mousse au chocolat and we got a chance to dry out on the top of the city in the breeze. The entire city was absolutely covered with stray cats; I have never seen so many.
We went on to Rocamadour, which is a city “clinging perilously to the cliff” (as says our tour guide packet) which I thought looked a lot like Minis Tirith from Lord of the Rings. We (and when I say we, I mean the TA and only the TA) decided that instead of taking the free elevator down and up the city, we should walk down yet another city on a hill, or rather city of and stuck to a hill (and by hill I mean cliff. As though when Westly climbed up the Cliffs of Insanity in the Princess Bride he stopped and built a town in his spare time.) It rained very heavily the entire time. And instead of meeting us at the bottom as was expected, the bus had to stop halfway up, so we got to walk back up half the city. (Another two drenchings, sweat and rain.) Apparently in the middle ages the pilgrims to this place would walk up the stone steps on their knees, arriving at the top bloodied and penitent. I did not walk on my knees.

Oradour (Village Martyr) and back to Paris - Wednesday
This morning we went to Oradour, a village burned in WWII. The massacre and fire took place on 10 Juin (June) 1944, just four days after D-Day. When the village finally had hope for freedom, the Nazis, partly in response to D-Day and partly continuing as they had, began the massacre. All the women and children fled to the church for sanctuary on that day (occupation had been in place for a while) and the men had joined in little groups, “stakeouts” of a sort, but all the stakeouts were killed and some extremely small percentage of those men escaped. The Nazis then went to the church and shot all the women and children. All of them. Houses were burned to smoke people out or kill them. Some were gassed, some were burned alive, and the Nazis burned the bodies to prevent identification and for reasons of corporeal mortification. Less than 10% of the bodies were recognizable. Now the entire city is called Village Martyr and is left pretty much as it was (but there are tombs for the bodies, some of the grounds are kept in rein, and there are memorials and signs, and the church was washed out) but there are still bullet holes all over the church, and the ruins of the houses, only the brick remaining.
Now I’m on the bus and we’re close to Paris, heading off to meet our families! I live in Le Sec, the “chic” district outside Paris, with an old lady. I hope she likes us!

Bon (?) Voyage

I am heartily sick of traveling. Not only was it a 24 hour trip, but also somewhere stuck in there are seven more hours. Just to make it longer. Let's start off at the beginning: flight to Chicago was fine, and I only had my laptop on for 90 min (this is important later) and I managed to pretty well keep myself awake. Then commences the 8 hour flight to London. This was a long, spacious flight. I was told by my mother to sleep right after dinner. Obediently, I wait through my sleepiness for dinner to come and start watching some movie. Dinner was an hour late in coming, but it wasn't too bad. After dinner, I finished the last 30 minutes of my movie, and then I spent five hours, FIVE hours trying various poses, various songs in my head, various actions to make myself fall asleep. Nothing. Just sitting there thinking of how much I needed to, checking my clock to see what time it was at home, and laying there in a bored, long, frustrasted manner. Upon arrival at London, we waited a full half an hour after "docking" because the walkway thing they had was new and didn't work so they spent 30 minutes trying to fix it instead of getting us off there. I wonder if anyone missed any flights?

So we got the old fashioned stairs down, and upon exciting the plane, my first thought was, "Mom didn't warn me it was so HUMID!" It was humid. And I was tired, and hungry, and the whole driving on the left was weird. In London, thought, you meet lots of people with British accents. Somehow I always associated it with old, gray haired women. Not so. And there were the cute Middle Eastern guys with turbans on and I thought, "This is something I woulndn't go to DIA expecting to see." Also, they won't post your gate information (except for your terminal) in London until approximately one hour before your flight, so I didn't know where to sit, and things are in pounds, US dollars, AND Euros and I was basically confused. And so in my 3.5 hour layover I couldn't sleep through since I didn't know where to wait, I turned on my lappy (which has a 4 hour battery, well, 4-5 depending on what I'm doing) but it said I only had 9 minutes left! Sigh.

Arrival in Paris, customs is a joke (they take your passport and immediately hand it back without looking at it and you're done), and I couldn't find anyone I was supposed to meet since there IS no baggage carousel one. Finally we found one and after waiting for an hour we decided the other girl left us so we got a taxi. Which dropped us off at the wrong Etap Hotel. And left before we knew it was wrong. So we got to walk two miles in the hot hot sun on my sore feet carrying/rolling baggage and speaking French/English to a stranger in my group.

But I'm here! And I got to go see Notre Dame today but I have a huge blister which distracted me and we got lost on the Metro and I really don't think this is the language they taught me at school. So the summary is I'm tired, hungry, disoriented, and incomprehensible. The taxi driver did say, when I said I spoke "un peu francais" that I actually spoke "un peu BIEN francais!" So!

I'm actually going!

I'm not leaving until Tuesday (Sep 5th), but I don't know what the internet capabilities will be like in Paris. For family-type people (and friends too, I guess) who want to keep track of me, though, here's my schedule for the first week so you'll know where I am. Good luck figuring that out...I haven't ever heard of these places, either.

Tuesday Sep 5, I leave Denver at about noon and I arrive via Chicago and London in Paris at about noon on Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday are spent in Paris, getting over jet lag, etc. Friday I'll be in Sarlat (which is apparently Southwest of Paris. Apparently.) Saturday I'm in Domme, visiting all sorts of chateaus, and I'll go to church on Sunday in Figeac. Monday we're off to Albi, Tuesday in Limoges, and finally on Wednesday we get back to Paris and meet our families we'll be staying with!

I doubt that I'll be able to be online very much during that first week, and I won't know until that second Wednesday (Sep 13) if my family has internet or if I get to spend lots of time in internet cafes. A bientot!